


Short Drop, Sudden Stop

by dosvedanya_bitches



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Prison, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Anxiety, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Has Issues, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, F/M, M/M, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Violence, War Veteran Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-05-29 20:52:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6393361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dosvedanya_bitches/pseuds/dosvedanya_bitches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Readjusting to life on the outside after seven years was never going to be easy for Steve.<br/>But with the help of some old friends, some new friends, a dog, his sworn arch-nemesis, lots of coffee and that really hot dude with the metal arm - actually, nope.<br/>Steve's fucked.<br/>Maybe not quite as fucked as he was this morning, but still pretty fucked.</p>
<p>A Steve-gets-out-of-prison au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Get Free

**Author's Note:**

> The Steve-Rogers-gets-out-of-prison au that literally no one asked for.  
> Bless Georgia for her terrible enabling.  
> Any feedback/suggestions for more angst is appreciated!!

He knows it’s no different, but somehow the air smells like freedom out here.

Sam’s not here yet, so he stands on the curb outside the prison gate and takes in as much of the car park scenery as he can get his eyes on. It’s fucking hot, the sort of piss-weary heat that makes him want to shrivel up inside a refrigerator. The sun beats down on him directly, and he can feel himself sweating through his shirt and pants. The grass on the curb is practically shrivelling in the heat, curling and crisp and brown. _Summer, hey?_

He inhales as deeply as possible, filling his lungs with air and ignoring the aching stretch that’s always present at the edge of full capacity. God, the air smells impossibly fresh, like sweating grass and sweltering bitumen, with no tinges of body odour or hospital-grade cleaner or well-oiled metal, no stale sweat or rust-like blood – god, but it smells like freedom. Smells like summer on the breeze, like the scalding paths in Brooklyn, like sweating grass on the nature strips.

Smells like home.

Well, how home used to smell. Steve doesn’t really know what home means, anymore. Sam’s warned him how much it’s changed, but Steve quietly thinks that perhaps Sam doesn’t really realise that the neighbourhood changing isn’t going to be the issue here. The real issue is going to be how much _Steve_ has changed. And he knows that he’s changed – it’s impossible not to change, not to alter yourself slightly, tweaking little behaviours here and there and then one day waking up and realising that you don’t have any fucking clue who you are anymore, only that you’re so far from what you used to be that you have to sit down for a bit and try to breathe because you’ve worked yourself into a panic attack –

Actually, that bit was probably just Steve.

Not that he’d ever know. You can’t show that kind of weakness inside, or they’ll smell it and be on you in seconds, tearing you apart like rabid dogs. Not that Steve had known that, about showing weakness, when he was going in. Sometimes he wishes someone had warned him, before they’d locked him up in here, but then he starts to really think about it and ends up spiralling down a path he doesn’t want to fucking be on and really it doesn’t fucking matter anymore, does it? Because he learnt his fucking lesson, naïve little shit that he was going in, and now he knows, now he’s changed, and it _doesn’t fucking matter_.

Because he’s free.

He closes his eyes and just stands there on the curb, swaying lightly back and forth because with his bum ear his balance isn’t too flash even on a good day like this let alone a bad one, and breathes in as much of the seemingly-cleaner air of this outside world as he can manage. The piss-weak breeze cards through the hair stuck to his sweating forehead, and he pushes it back with rough fingers, his skin buzzing lightly.

He feels –

He doesn’t know how he feels. Unbalanced, maybe, and not just physically, though he’s certainly not doing too well today. Not that he particularly cares. He feels sort of light-headed, elated, like he’ll float away any moment now. He’s free, he’s _free_ , he’s out of that goddamn cell and out of the fences and out of the routines and he’s _free_.

It’s a thought, that’s for sure.

He drops the duffel bag off his shoulder and dumps it onto the ground, crouching down and sitting his ass on the edge of the curb beside it with his forearms crossed and resting on his knees. It’s surreally quiet outside the prison, the air hot and still, and he knows it’s not just because he’s not wearing the hearing aid. The car park is empty except for three white transport vans parked in the far back corner and a few employee cars to his left.

God, _why the fuck would you work in a prison?_

He shakes his head, but then a thought occurs to him: at least a job at a prison is a fucking _job_.

The familiar guilt starts coiling, the tension building in his gut, and Steve finds that the world’s narrowing down to the piece of gravel that he’s staring at, sitting on the car park bitumen, and everything else is blurring out. _Fuck_. Steve’s a fucking felon now – he’s a goddamned piece of shit, absolute fucking scum, and no one in their right mind is going to hire him, to give him any semblance of responsibility, because Steve Rogers has proved beyond reasonable doubt that he’s guilty as shit, isn’t he, and he’s done seven fucking years to cement that.

No one’s going to hire him. He won’t be able to get a fucking job. How the fuck is he going to _live_ if he can’t get a fucking job? He won’t be able to leech off Sam forever, there’s no way that’s fair on Sam at all –

The scalding breeze runs through the car park again, and he’s abruptly reminded of how thin the fabric of the shirt and shorts he’s wearing are by the way they’re soaked through with sweat and sticking to his skin. He picks at the shirt and holds it away from his chest, aggressively wondering how much longer it’ll be before Sam arrives, because he is _not_ going to ramp up his anxiety about getting a job while he’s sitting out here.

He’s going to wait for Sam, and it’s going to be fine. There are resources, anyway, aren’t there? Steve swears he’s heard other guys talking about having jobs – _legal_ jobs – on the outside after stints, so surely there’s some chance…

Steve huffs out a frustrated breath, pressing his fingertips into the sides of his head as hard as he can, until the ache from the pressure is enough to distract him from thinking about shit he can’t change and can’t do anything about right now. He focuses on that and the heat, the goddamned _heat_ and how his shirt is sticking to his back, and the tickling of sweat dripping down the back of his neck, and his too-long hair that won’t stay tucked behind his ears, and he should really get a fucking haircut before attempting to re-join society or he might scare someone –

_Fuck_. Steve presses his fingers in harder, until the ache turns to a sharp pain and everything goes _quiet_. He takes in a deep, aching breath and blows it out, feeling the air pass over the tops of his knees, still tucked up to his chest. Everything is going to be okay. It’s going to be fine. _Steve_ is going to be fine. He’ll find a way to make this work, because he always has before and why should this be any different? It’s going to be fine.

He lifts his head and rolls it around, feeling his neck crack. He’s been so tense all day, not even being able to eat a goddamned thing at breakfast, too conscious of the stares and Rumlow ribbing him ( _you’ll wait for me, won’t you, sweetcheeks? a touch on his face and he flinches back – they laugh and he wants to throw up, nausea –_ ) and Scott trying so hard to be upbeat and all in all making it worse, and now he’s outside and he’s still feeling so tense, muscles unconsciously tight in a way that he knows he’s going to pay for later.

But here, sitting on the curb with the prison at his back, _free_ – it’s the best feeling in ages.

A battered black jeep roars around the bend, pulling shakily through the prison car park gates after pausing for the marshals at the boom gate. Steve, frowning, watches it weave around the boundary of the car park and come towards him. It slowly rolls to a stop a few metres away from where Steve is still sitting on the curb. He can’t see who is inside – the tint on the windows is so dark that it has to be skating the edge of legal. On the outside, though, the jeep has paint flecking off and a serious rust problem on the underside. The engine putters unhealthily for a few seconds while the brakes creak on.

Steve doesn’t recognise it at all, and that sets his skin prickling with the anxiety that’s always lurking, his sticky shirt suddenly becoming intensely irritating. He pushes down the urge to rub at his arms under the sleeves and instead lifts his chin and narrows his eyes, his body tensing up as he braces for the judgemental stares of whoever gets out of the jeep. Probably a prison worker, maybe a visiting family or friend… Steve knows he looks ridiculous, sitting out on the curb of the car park in the direct, scalding sun, waiting to be picked up from prison. It’s obvious that he’s just been released. So fucking obvious.

_God_ , Steve thinks suddenly, with chilling clarity. _Is this what it’s gonna be like?_ Always feeling so raw under people’s stares, always feeling like they _know_ , like they _know_ his entire fucking life story and that they _know_ he doesn’t deserve to fucking be there, to be out in the world and not locked up in a cell like the scum that he is? He flinches at the thought, his gut twisting into knots, because _why the fuck haven’t you thought about this before, Rogers?_ He should’ve fucking thought about this before, god knows he had the time to think about it, but he hadn’t and he’s a goddamn stupid idiot because he could’ve gotten this anxiety about it under control before he had to actually deal with the reality of it.

He drags his hands down his face, squeezing his eyes shut to try and push down the prickling feeling spreading down his chest and back. _Fuck._ And no one has even gotten out of the car yet. No one is even looking at him. It’s all in his fucking head. In his head, damn it. He knocks his head on his folded arms where they’re sitting on top of his knees. _Weak._

A splitting metal whine breaks through the summer air, and Steve jerks his head up to see the jeep’s window roll down. And is that –

“How much for the night?” Sam calls out, grin wide and genuine.

Steve huffs and scrambles up off the curb, picking up his duffel bag off the ground, throwing it over his shoulder and jogging towards the car, relief and happiness at seeing Sam immediately taking the place of the anxiety in his chest and the knots in his stomach. The prickling, tingling feeling under his skin melts away with Sam’s smile.

When he gets closer, Sam reaches over and opens the door for him, and he gratefully chucks the bag on the floor and folds himself into the seat after it. He manages to hit his head, somehow, when he quickly pulls the door shut behind him so that not much air-conditioned cool air is let out, but he doesn’t care. The jeep is air-conditioned and it smells like stale beer and fast food and it has Sam at the wheel. It’s a goddamn _experience_ and he is keeping himself in the present with it.

“That depends,” he says in answer to Sam’s joke, “on what you’re askin’ for, Wilson.”

Sam laughs, and it’s wonderful. Steve finds himself smiling a little as well, even if it’s on the darker side. Sam still looks the same as the last time Steve saw him, when he came to visit about two months ago: broad-broad shoulders, bright white teeth in a wide, gapped, easy smile, dark skin a little bit darker from the sun of the summer, black goatee neatly trimmed and styled. It’s nice to know that something hasn’t changed, that something has stayed the same as it has in his memory. He has no idea how different anything else is going to be, and if Sam warned him…there’s no saying how much he’s going to freak out about it.

_God, seven years._

Sam claps him on the shoulder, his hand heavy and solid. “Welcome back to the land of the free, man.”

Steve lifts the corner of his mouth in a rueful smile. “Thanks,” he says quietly. _And there it is._ He runs his fingers through his too-long hair (chin-length…shit, he really needs a fucking haircut) just for something to do with his hands to deal with the sudden flush of anxiety at the reminder of _freedom_ , before forcing himself to clasp them stiffly in his lap.

Sam is his best friend and knows him inside-out, and so he must see something in Steve’s expression or movements, not that Steve can fucking hide anything, and read it correctly because he nudges Steve with his shoulder and his grin turns softer. “Hey, don’t be like that, man. Plenty of time for that bullshit later. We got places to be. Here, have a burger.”

Sam reaches behind his seat and fumbles on the floor for a bit, before finally pulling over a crinkled paper bag and dumping it in Steve’s lap. Steve uncurls it and looks inside hopefully, and – there is indeed a burger. It’s not exactly hot, more lukewarm from the air conditioning, but it smells so good that his mouth waters. He pulls it out of the bag very gently and carefully, treating it like it’s fragile and precious.

“Bless you, Sam Wilson,” he says reverently, upon finding soggy fries and a can of warm coke under the burger.

Sam grins. “Figured you’d appreciate it.” He puts the car into gear and presses on the accelerator as Steve starts to unwrap the burger, edging up the speed until the jeep is jerkily careening around the boundary of the prison car park and towards the boom gate. Steve determinedly keeps his eyes fixed on the burger in his hands as Sam thanks the marshals for letting them through and wishes them a good day, hunching his shoulders when he feels the marshals’ eyes on him, the edges of the burger blurring with how heavily he’s focusing on it.

They’re waved through pretty quickly though, and Sam probably distracted Steve with the burger on purpose because he is Sam and he’s sneaky like that and he knows how Steve has trouble with fixating on things and obsessing over them and look – they’re already pulling out of the prison car park gate and onto the highway before Steve glances up through the windscreen and notices that they’ve left the prison far behind.

His stomach jolts unpleasantly, his hands starting to prickle with tension. He hadn’t even noticed they’d gone through the entry gates – god, had he really spaced out that much on a fucking burger? He watches the prison grow smaller and smaller in the hand mirror, his skin prickling unpleasantly. It’s been – well, not his home, no fucking way – but he’s spent a lot of time there. Seven years. _Fuck._ He feels slightly nauseous all of a sudden, his stomach churning unpleasantly, and looks down at the burger in his hands. He doesn’t think he can eat it now, though he hasn’t eaten anything all day. _Couldn’t. Can’t._

He carefully rewraps the burger in its paper and puts it down in his lap.

“– up…an?”

“What?” Steve blinks, not having caught what Sam had said. He shouldn’t have been ignoring Sam – god, _you’re a fucking jerk, Rogers_. Sam’s driven all this way out to pick him up, and he’s offering his goddamn couch for an indefinite amount of time, and Steve can’t even make the effort to listen to him. Steve swallows hard, clenching his fist. He turns in his seat to look at Sam directly, putting his good ear in a better position to hear what Sam says.

“I said, what’s up, man?”

Sam’s looking at him out of the corner of his eye and his voice is concerned.

“Oh.” Steve gives a non-committal head tilt. “Nothing. Homesick, I guess.” His voice is strained, the words almost clawing out of his throat.

It’s a shitty joke, and not really a joke at all, but Sam is his friend and Sam is a good guy so he smiles anyway, nodding like he gets it. Which he probably does, because Sam is the most empathetic and smart and decent guy Steve knows. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve a friend like Sam.

“D’you mind if I put some music on?”

“Go ahead.” He waves his hand. He can deal with a bit of background noise.

But when Sam turns the radio on, he adjusts the volume so it’s quiet enough to be manageable. _What a pal, what a fucking pal._ Sam has always been considerate and careful, what with Steve not being able to hear properly, but it’s the reminder that someone actually cares about him enough to keep the goddamn car radio down so he doesn’t get overwhelmed that sets Steve’s chest swelling. In prison, no one had given a flying fuck about whether or not he could process anything, yelling or shoving at him when he couldn’t quite catch everything. _And here’s Sam._

He twists back in his seat to look through the windscreen at the road again, chest warm and a small smile curling on his lips. The radio is on a jazz station, big band stuff with a good riff, and they listen to it for a bit without talking, Steve watching the road disappear under the hood of the jeep. It’s soothing, and it covers the noise in his head well enough that he can relax a little bit into the seat, feeling the most comfortable he has all day. It’s disturbingly…normal. Like it used to be.

“Thanks for picking me up,” Steve says after a few beats, a few more yards of road. “I really appreciate it.”

Sam nods. “I know you do, buddy. And it’s no skin off my back – we talked about this, remember? I’m shipping your dumb ass around for as long as you need me to. I am one-hundred percent here for you. Don’t tell me we gotta do this all over again, man. Hey? Hey?” He reaches over to shove his fingers into Steve’s ribs, making him jump.

Steve grumbles and pushes his hand away, but there’s a warm feeling spreading in his chest and his lips are twitching. He can still hardly believe it. Sam is here for him. Sam will help him out, support him through all this _shit_. Sam even _knows_ about this stuff, because Sam finished his psych degree while Steve was in ( _and you couldn’t even make it to his graduation because you got your ass landed in prison, you dumb-ass motherfucker_ ) and he’s really smart and _god_ , what a fucking pal is Sam Wilson.

“Nah,” Steve says, honestly, “We don’t gotta do it again. I’m just – you know…yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna eat that burger now or what? You’re looking a bit skinny, Rogers.”

Steve shakes his head. He knows what being skinny looks like, spent pretty much his entire life an asthmatic, half-deaf, rake-thin son-of-a-bitch with heart problems and a weak immune system. Nowadays he’s an asthmatic, half-deaf, bulked-up son-of-a-bitch with less heart problems and a slightly-stronger immune system. He’s lost a bit of weight, sure, but he knows that he’s nowhere near as bad as he used to be.

He picks up the burger again anyway, because it turns out that he is hungry after all. It smells good again, thank god.

Sam shoots him a sly sideways look as he’s unwrapping it again. “This is good progress, man, really good progress.”

Steve smiles despite himself. “Fuckin’ asshole, Wilson, is what you are.”

“Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be?”

“That’s how it’s gonna be.”

And this is how Steve remembers their friendship being – a little friendly ribbing, trading insults and taking the piss out of each other and themselves. It feels so unbelievably good to fall back into that, to fall back on giving Sam shit and getting shit back like nothing’s changed, like Sam hasn’t been living his life for the past seven years and Steve... _hasn’t_. But here Sam is, acting like he always has.

Steve’s chest suddenly feels tight, and he’s halfway to reaching for his inhaler before he processes that it’s just _feeling_ and not an asthma attack. He takes a large bite of the burger to cover the fact that his throat feels too tight to talk, and groans involuntarily.

“ _Ohmygod_ ,” he moans, the words muffled by the burger, his eyes falling shut as he chews, “ _Fuck._ ”

It’s almost too much, all of the flavours of sugar and salt and cheese and _good meat_ and tomato sauce and mustard and mayo – overwhelming, but in a good way. He’s been eating nothing but bland prison food for seven goddamned years, and he thinks that he actually might cry at the taste of this squashed, lukewarm burger. He can feel his eyes tearing up.

Sam’s grinning at him, he can tell, and Steve jerks when Sam’s fingers dig into his ribs again.

“Keep it down, I don’t need to hear that shit.”

Steve ignores him and declares, “This is the most beautiful thing I ate in my whole damn life.”

“ _Eaten_ , Steven, you uncultured hooligan,” Sam corrects him mockingly, “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever _eaten_.”

“Take a boy outta Brooklyn, you can’t take the Brooklyn outta the boy,” Steve replies, in the heaviest Brooklyn accent he can muster, and is rewarded with an easy laugh. God, it’s so fucking easy, being here with Sam. Like their friendship hasn’t changed, hasn’t been tainted like everything else Steve fucking touches. It’s exhilarating. Steve smiles to himself and takes another bite of the burger. Fuck, but it’s incredible.

“Well, good thing we’re taking the boy back to Brooklyn, then,” Sam says, and reaches over to squeeze Steve’s shoulder and shake him a little bit. “You’re going home, hey? Hey?” Sam grins widely, his voice warm and excited.

“Home,” Steve echoes. He repeats, “ _Home_ ,” a bit dazedly, then, when the word settles in his head. The immediate feeling of longing hits him so hard he aches with it, tensing in his seat. His sinuses burn and he sniffs, nose suddenly running and eyes pricking at the corners.

He’s going home, he’s really going home. He’s out of that cramped, stinking, piece-of-shit _facility_ and he’s in the car with Sam and they are now miles and miles away from the prison and it may have been seven years but _god_ , he’s fucking free and he’s going _home_. Home to Brooklyn and to Sam and to Nat and to Angie at the diner and Mr Mogilevsky at the Polish deli and to Mrs Rubenstein and her dog at the park and to his mom, his _mom_ in Evergreen who he hasn’t visited for years and years and years –

_Home._

“Home,” Sam agrees, and squeezes Steve’s shoulder once more before putting his hand back on the wheel. “I’m taking you home.”

 


	2. Choke It Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve should've thought about this before now. He should've thought about a lot of things before now, because it's coming back to bite him in the ass.

Steve is finished with his burger and halfway to being lulled asleep by the vibrations of the car under him when Sam speaks.

“You’re alright with going to mom’s place, right? She wanted to see you before I took you home.”

Steve startles, but tries to play it cool by running his fingers through his hair and pushing it out of where it’d fallen in his face. “Uh, yeah, that’d be great, actually,” he says, and Sam says, “Great, man,” before Steve can fully process what visiting Mrs Wilson might even _mean._

But then, of course, his fucking brain takes it and twists it into something ugly.

Because Mrs Wilson is like a second mother to him, has been since he met Sam in college and Sam invited him and Natasha home for Christmas that first year. She’d taken one look at them, too skinny and too wary, and taken them under her wing. And then the Wilsons had kept him grounded, had been Steve’s honest-to-god rock, his anchor throughout – _everything_ – and Jesus fucking Christ if Steve doesn’t have a huge pit of longing in his gut because he’s aching to see them again, Mrs Wilson and Dina, but –

_But_.

And that’s the fucking thing, isn’t it? There’s always a goddamned _but_ with him.

Steve tries to settle in his seat again, leaning his head back up against the window and staring blankly at the road outside as it flashes past in a black-grey blur. He tries to push down the prickling feeling under the skin of his arms, under his armpits, at his temples, because now is not the time to have a fucking panic attack, not when he’s just got out and Sam’s driving him home. He can’t have a panic attack and then go and see Mrs Wilson. She’ll _know_ , and then she’ll look at him with her big, sad eyes and pity him and it’ll be just like when he was a five-foot-nothing twig, a weak piece of shit who couldn’t take a goddamned punch, and he won’t ever be able to get rid of that, will he?

And everyone’s going to know, everyone’s going to fucking know because they’ll just _look_ at him and be able to fucking tell what a piece of shit he is, because he should be back in the cell and locked up and not free to roam the goddamned streets because he’s _filthy_ and everyone will know and they’ll spit on him and he’ll fucking _deserve it_ because he fucking _does_ deserve it. And he can’t even cope with what he is, his head is so fucked up by everything and _god_ , he’s so fucking weak. And Mrs Wilson, she already knows, she’s known the whole time what Steve is, what he’s done, but she hasn’t seen him since visiting five years ago and she doesn’t _know_ , doesn’t know how much he’s changed. And he’s changed so fucking much.

Fuck, but he can’t breathe. He feels like he’s buzzing out of his skin.

He grits his teeth, tries to count to ten and match his breathing. Gets to four, gives up. He can feel his face heating up, the sweat gathering on his forehead and under his arms. He wipes his palms on his thighs, but even when they’re dry he can’t help but itch at the tingling skin along his forearms, can’t help but rub at his thighs to try and stop the prickling there. He wants to claw out of his skin, tear at it and rip it off because it’s too tight, it feels too fucking tight like it’s strangling him and there’s a swirling mass of nausea in his gut and he feels sick, _oh god_ , he feels like he’s going to be _sick_ –

“Sam, stop the car,” he chokes out, eyes wide.

Sam, to his credit and probably his air force training, takes one look at Steve to assess the situation and immediately swerves into the emergency lane, pulling up with a screech so quickly that Steve is thrown a few inches towards the windshield before being dropped forcefully back in his seat. He barely notices the belt digging red lines into his skin before he’s ripping it off and grasping, desperately, hands slippery, for the door handle.

He practically falls out of the car when the door bangs open, dropping onto the gravel on his hands and knees and retching up chunks of the half-digested hamburger he’d just finished eating. His chest heaves – _breathe can’t breathe can’t fucking breathe fuck_ – and he gasps in air, chokes out vomit onto the side of the road until he’s retching up bile and water and who the fuck else knows what and _there’s nothing left to throw up_ but it’s not stopping the cramping in his stomach and it’s sure as fuck not stopping the panicked haze clouding his head.

“- breathe with me, man, focus on me,” Sam is saying, and that’s his hand Steve can feel rubbing up and down his back between his shoulder blades, but he can’t fucking focus on Sam because he’s retching again, bile-tainted saliva dripping from his mouth to join the pool of vomit on the gravel. _Jesus Christ, Jesus fucking Christ_. It’s disgusting, he notes with vague amusement. Disgusting like him. He wants to laugh, because he feels so hollow. He feels so empty.

He stays on his hands and knees, staring blankly down at the vomit pooling on the road beneath him, until his stomach stops cramping and his head stops spinning and the volume of his heartbeat and the blood rushing in his ears reduces enough for Sam’s voice to bleed through, a low, comforting murmur to accompany the soothing feeling of his hand rubbing between Steve’s shoulder blades. Time feels so still. The cars on the highway speed past, _whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh_. He tries to concentrate on that, tries to calm himself down and shake off the last remnants of nausea. _Whoosh-whoosh_.

“You with me?” Sam asks him when Steve has slowed down his breathing some.

He’s not, not really, but he sighs, “Yeah,” anyway. It’s easier than admitting how fucking weak he is. Even though Sam knows already. _Fuck_. Fucking _fuck_ , Sam just watched him heave his fucking guts up on the side of the highway. Because he’s terrified of seeing Sam’s _mom_. Steve squeezes his eyes shut, grits his teeth. _What a fucking mess_. He’s such a goddamned fucking mess.

It’s been barely a few hours since he got out, and already Steve’s falling apart. He’s obviously been lying to himself, but he really thought he’d be able to handle it. He thought it’d be ok. He thought he’d be able to cope with it. And already, _already_ , he’s a mess on the side of the fucking highway and he hasn’t even _seen_ anyone except _Sam_. How the fuck is he going to cope with anyone else? Any _thing_ else?

Steve can’t do this. He can’t. He should’ve fucking _thought about this_ before they let him out, because that’s all he could fucking _do_ in there and he didn’t even think about it, didn’t even consider anything that would happen on the outside because it was scary and it was too hard and it freaked him out and he’s fucking _paying for it now, isn’t he_ because this is what fucking happens when he doesn’t use his goddamned head. This is what happens when he doesn’t goddamn _think_. And he should have, he fucking should have because he had all of that time, all of those years in a tiny cell and he didn’t fucking _think_ and now he’s out and he’s not _ready_ –

“Oh, Jesus,” he breathes out on a long, painful exhale. “Oh, _Jesus Christ_ , Sammy –“

“Hey, hey, hey, hey!” Sam’s hands slide up to curl over his shoulders, fingers digging in to the muscle there to the point of pain. He squeezes for a long second before letting go. “Don’t do it, man, don’t fucking do it to yourself.”

Steve nods helplessly and tries to calm his breathing back down. He ends up coughing out another mouthful of bile-tinged saliva on another painful contraction of his stomach, because he can’t even fucking stop getting himself from getting riled up, because his head is filled with shit that pollutes every fucking thought and it just goes round and round and round and round until he’s literally throwing it up on the side of the fucking road and _Jesus Christ_ , he’s pathetic.

Sam keeps rubbing his hand up and down between his shoulder blades, and Steve is just so goddamned _grateful_ for Sam Wilson because that touch, the constant soothing motion of someone _touching_ him and it not hurting for once – that grounds him more than the sound of the cars whooshing past, more than the acrid smell of vomit, more than anything else.

“Thank you,” he says in a small voice, hoarse and croaky, after a few minutes, when he feels like he’s finally done with the panic, with the anxiety. He’s incredibly thankful, so fucking thankful for Sam being here and not just letting him rot, not just letting him try and push through on his own. Steve wants to cry, he thinks, because there’s no fucking way he deserves a friend like Sam. Yet here they are. _How the fuck did he get this lucky?_

“I told you, I’m here for you,” Sam says, and Steve has to close his eyes for a second or he’s going to _actually_ cry all over Sam. He can feel it in the stinging behind his eyes, in the burning inside his nose, in the swelling in his throat and his chest. He hates this feeling, this feeling of being so emotionally raw that every little thing affects him in such a huge way. He feels like a bare nerve, constantly exposed. He never used to be like this.

He swallows down the urge to cry, blinks away the burning in his tear ducts. He needs to get the hell up off the side of the road. He gets a foot up under him and slowly stands up, feeling off-balance and a little bit dizzy. Steve’s just thankful his balance hasn’t gone completely to shit, because that’d just be one embarrassing episode after another. His skin is still tingling, the back of his neck and under his armpits prickling uncomfortably. He’s absolutely ruined his t-shirt with sweat, and lord knows what he smells like. He probably stinks. Fuck, he’ll probably stink up Sam’s entire fucking car.

He turns and climbs back into the car without looking at Sam, because he can’t bring himself to look Sam in the eye after that. He can’t, can’t fucking face up to what Sam just saw, because he doesn’t want to see the uncomfortable look on Sam’s face, doesn’t want to see the distaste at Steve’s goddamn weakness, doesn’t want to see the disgust because Steve fucking knows how fucking disgusting it is, how fucking _weak_ it is that he just worked himself up and puked on the side of the fucking highway just because of the mere _thought_ of going to see Sam’s _mom._

Fuck. He can’t look Sam in the eye.

He keeps his eyes looking out the window, even though he isn’t seeing anything. He just stares through the glass.

He hears Sam climb back in the other side of the car and pull the door shut behind him with a creak and a thump. For a few seconds Sam just sits there in the driver’s seat, and as every one of those seconds goes on Steve’s anxiety ramps up and up and he curls tighter and tighter into himself, hunching his shoulders up around his ears. The silence, it gets to him every fucking time. He hears every one of Sam’s slow, measured and deliberate inhale-exhales despite his bad ear, because every cell in his body feels like it’s so focused on Sam’s reaction, whatever the fuck Sam’s going to _say_ , going to _think_.

He’s shaking, he realises, looking down at his hands clenched in his lap. There are bits of gravel from the road on his knees. He doesn’t brush them off. Can’t. Every part of him is locked on Sam, waiting for him to voice whatever the fuck is brewing in his head. Because Steve can’t fucking think about anything else other than the fact that he should have at least _mentioned_ something before Sam had to witness what a fucking mess he is. Before Sam saw what he’s dealing with, bringing Steve home.

He should have told Sam before now. He really fucking should’ve told him. Steve _knows_ why he didn’t, knows exactly why he’s never told a soul, has kept this close to his chest and tried to hide it as best he can, shoving it down and letting it build and build and build until he can get to a quiet, dark spot and curl into a ball and let himself shake and choke on air, let out the tension and just fucking _lose control_ – yeah, he fucking knows why he hasn’t told anyone, hasn’t told Sam.

(The shame _eats_ at him, a sharp feeling in his gut that aches like it’s physically gnawing at his insides.)

And he really hadn’t planned on telling Sam, on telling anyone. But – this. Losing it in front of Sam, when they aren’t even a whole say away from prison. Freaking the fuck out on the side of the goddamned highway. Making Sam stop the car. Sam, rubbing between his shoulder blades to calm him down, to ground him. Sam, who had no idea before now that this is what he’s going to have to be dealing with, taking Steve into his home for a bit, trying to help him get his feet under him. Sam, who probably doesn’t even know where to start with the fucking wreck that Steve is right now.

Sam, who still hasn’t said a fucking word.

_Oh, Jesus._ Steve shudders, the tension in the confined space really getting to him. His stomach is twisting itself into knots – though in a different way than before. He still can’t fucking look at Sam, but he flinches in his seat when Sam turns the keys and the engine sputters on, the car settling into a vibrating hum under his feet. The indicator goes _tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick_ , and then Sam is accelerating and easing them back onto the highway.

Steve watches the grass of the side of the road blur into a green-brown smear as they go down the highway, interspersed every now and then by a speed sign. It’s painfully quiet in the car, because Sam must have turned the music off when he’d pulled the car over and its absence is extremely fucking obvious. Steve can hear Sam’s breathing hitch every few minutes, as if he’s going to say something but then stops himself at the last minute. It’s so fucking painful, Steve feels like it might almost wind him up again. But he’s not going to let it, not again, so he just waits in silence, every cell of his body on edge in anticipation.

“So how long’s this been going on?” Sam asks eventually, neutrally, staring straight at the road in front.

Steve exhales harshly at the break in the tension, though it isn’t the kind of relief that’s relaxing – it’s just a diffusion of the strain in his muscles. He forces his fists to unclench, digs his nails out of his palms where they leave crescent-shaped indents in the skin. He turns away from the window, looks straight ahead out the windscreen, head parallel to Sam’s, and sighs.

“Don’t know. ‘Bout five years, I guess,” he says, his voice hoarse. His hands are still shaking.

“ _Five years?_ ” Sam exclaims, and the sudden change in his voice is tinged with just enough anger to have Steve flinching back from him and cringing into his seat, heart suddenly pounding. Sam is focusing too much on the road in front to notice, which Steve is extremely fucking thankful for because _that_ is not a conversation he wants to have today. Or ever. Steve forces himself to relax by telling himself that Sam didn’t do it on purpose.

Sam swears under his breath, shakes his head and says, more gently, “Why didn’t you tell me, man?”

Steve bites the inside of his cheek. “Didn’t want to worry you. Thought I could deal with it.”

Sam works his jaw, clenches his hands on the steering wheel so tightly that it creaks. “Look, I’m sorry, but _that_ is not what I’d call ‘dealing’. That is what I would call the _opposite_ of ‘dealing’.”

God, Sam is reacting exactly the way Steve feared he would. _Fuck._ Of course he’s reacting this way, of-fucking-course. Because Steve is a pathetic, weak son-of-a-bitch and he _knows_ he can’t fucking cope with this but he thought he could and now he’s puked his guts up on the side of the highway and Sam _saw_ and now Sam _knows_ that Steve can’t even keep his head together anymore, can’t even deal with being outside for one fucking day and it’s only going to get worse from here on.

Steve buries his face in his hands. “I know,” he forces out, muffled. He knows that this isn’t dealing. He knows that he has a goddamned problem, he’s not fucking stupid. It’s not like his head throws all of this shit at him and he just ignores what it means – he _knows_ what it means, knows he’s got a huge fucking problem. And now he’s gone and had a goddamned panic attack over thinking about seeing Mrs Wilson. _FUCK._ This is absolutely not dealing.

Sam’s right, Steve knows Sam’s right, and yeah, he should have fucking told Sam about it before now, but he hadn’t because he hadn’t wanted to admit that his own fucking head could put him down and out of it and he couldn’t fucking stop it sometimes. So yeah, he hadn’t told Sam, and he hasn’t been dealing, but he’s been ok. He’s been doing alright until now.

“Look,” Sam says, and there’s a sigh in his voice, “I know you don’t want me to make a big deal outta this, but _Jesus_ , Steve, that wasn’t something I can just ignore. That isn’t – _mild symptoms of anxiety_ , that’s goddamned _debilitating_. And it’s been like that for five years? And I visited you what, every _month?_ You could’ve fucking told me and we could’ve seen about sorting that shit out.”

“I know,” Steve groans into his hands.

He wants to cry, he thinks, just to relieve a bit of the pressure building up in his head. Sam just wants to help, he knows, and he’s fucking grateful for it, but there is honest-to-god no _fucking_ way that he could have told Sam about this when it started. He wasn’t in the right headspace for it, and _Jesus fuck_ he still isn’t, but if _anyone_ inside had ever found out about it, Steve would be – he’d be –

Well. Let’s just leave it at he couldn’t tell Sam.

Steve drags his hands down his face, fingers pulling the sides of his mouth down before releasing as he drops his hands against his thighs with a _smack_. “I know,” he says again, “But I’m gonna fix it. Now that I’m out, I’m gonna work on it, make it better. You don’t have to worry about it, Sam, really.”

Sam is silent for a long moment.

Then: “Shit,” Sam says, laughing bitterly, “I forgot what a fucking self-absorbed asshole you can be sometimes.”

“Jesus –” Steve huffs, throwing his head back and knocking it against the headrest.

“I mean it – you cut people out who care about you because, I don’t know, you don’t want to _burden_ them or some stupid shit like that? God, Steve, you should _know_ by now that doing that never works out well for anyone. You can’t just _dismiss_ me like that. You can’t just – _fuck_ – say shit like that, _I’m gonna fix it, make it better_. It doesn’t fucking _work_ like that!”

Steve doesn’t flinch when Sam raises his voice this time, but the words make him cringe into himself all the same.

“God, you’re such a fucking asshole,” Sam continues, shaking his head. “And yeah, I’m mad at you, but I’m gonna stop you right there, because I know what you’re thinking and I know what you’re doing to yourself and you’ve gotta stop, because I ain’t mad at you about that. Listen to me.”

Steve sets his jaw and stares stonily out the windshield. Sam punches him in the shoulder, hard enough to hurt, before continuing.

“You listening? Because Steve, I am not mad at you because this whole – thing – is some…unexpected _burden_ , alright? I honestly expected you to be a lot worse-off than you are.”

“Thanks,” Steve says drily.

“Shut your fucking mouth and let me finish. I thought you’d be a catatonic, lifeless robot because that place had sucked away all of your humanity, everything that made you Steve Rogers. But you’re out, man, and you’re still _you_. So obviously something’s gotta give, ‘cause there’s no way you coulda kept your head like that without compromising. And that compromise turns out to be a bit of anxiety, so what. Doesn’t make you weak, Steve – it means you’ve been put under so much pressure and you came out the other side. You made it. A bit battered, a bit broken, sure, but you’re here and you’re you, and that’s fucking amazing.”

Steve sniffs back the tears clogging his nose and throat, his eyes stinging and swollen. _Fuck_. He hadn’t wanted to cry all over Sam, not like this. He swipes his forearm across his eyes, harshly wiping away the tears before they can drip down his face. _Fucking hell._ He doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t fucking deserve a goddamn thing Sam is saying about this. Sam doesn’t fucking _know_ – He doesn’t deserve Sam’s sympathy. God, it’s like a pit of black, clogging tar in his stomach, weighing him down, reminding him of exactly what he is.

( _Worthless_.)

“I _am_ mad, however,” Sam continues archly, and Steve sinks down into his seat even more, “that you never said anything. _Five years_ , man. Five goddamn years and you never said a _thing_. Never even hinted at it. And you’re a _shit_ liar, man! I cannot believe I didn’t even notice!” Sam thumps the steering wheel.

Steve grimaces. Sam’s visits were the only good thing in that place, bright flares in the dark, murky years of hell. He would have killed himself before ruining one of them with talking about his fucking panic attacks. So he hadn’t told Sam, yeah, but he’d only gotten it past him because Sam hadn’t specifically asked. He was a pretty shit liar, after all. One direct question and he would’ve been done for.

But he really couldn’t have told Sam, not on any of those visits. Not on the visit after the first time it happened, not on any of the visits after that. Because Sam is his friend, and being Sam he would’ve tried to take care of Steve and push him get some help before it – well, got as bad as it is now. But Steve couldn’t have gotten help, not if it meant that anyone in that place would’ve found out. Things had been bad enough.

And even if he _had_ said something, _had_ told Sam that his head was fucking him up, that would have just put more stress on Sam while he was finishing his degree. More to worry about, on top of his friend being in prison, anyway. It wouldn’t have been good for anyone, Steve knows, if he’d said anything. So he hadn’t said anything, and he doesn’t regret it. He can’t apologise; he doesn’t feel sorry for not telling Sam, not under the circumstances. The best he can offer is:

“Sometimes I really wanted to tell you.” His voice is very small.

“But you didn’t.”

Steve cringes, feeling heavy and aching. “Can we not talk about this right now?” His voice is still hoarse, with an edge of desperation, of creeping hysteria.

He can’t even hide it anymore. He’s pleading, sure, and he knows Sam’s going to bring it up again. But he just – needs time. Needs time to get his head on straight, needs time to quiet the mess of thoughts in his head and wrestle them into some kind of sense that doesn’t have him freaking out on the side of the road again. He knows he’s stalling.

Sam is silent for a moment.

“We aren’t done yet, Rogers,” he concedes eventually. “I’m gonna let you off easy this time, because you just got out of prison and all –“

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve says quickly, bringing his elbow up to lean on the door so that he can rest his head on his palm. “You can keep reamin’ my ass later. I’m gonna take a nap, get my beauty sleep so’s I can look pretty for your mom, alright?”

Sam gives an exaggerated groan. “Asshole,” he mutters under his breath.

Steve smooshes the side of his face into his palm, stares out the window as the trees whip past. He’s not off the hook yet, probably never will be. He’s not that lucky, never has been. But there are more immediate things to focus on, to brace himself for. He lets his eyes drift shut and sinks into the hum of the car engine to try and block out the lingering apprehension in his stomach at the thought of seeing Mrs Wilson.

_It’s gonna be ok_ , he tries to reassure himself. _It’s gonna be ok._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell me what you think! Is Steve suffering enough? Probably, but it's only going to get worse from here...


	3. Breathe Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve doesn't deserve a friend like Sam, but Steve's always been an idiot and never capable of seeing what's been right in front of his face the whole time.

Steve doesn’t even realise he’d actually fallen asleep until Sam starts making tight enough turns that it fucks with his internal balance and hits him with a wave of vertigo at every corner.

He blinks hazily, trying to wake up enough to cut through the nausea building in his stomach, the interior of the car slowly coming into focus around him. His head feels stuffy, like he’s been sick or crying or something, the inside of his nose dry and aching for some reason. Maybe he has been crying, while he was sleeping or something. He doesn’t fucking know. So he tries to push that thought out of his head and sniffs, squirming upright until he’s sitting straight in the seat, his head just brushing the roof of the car.

He leans his head to the right, cracking his neck and stretching out the kinks, and registers the surroundings outside with a pang that hits him so deep in the chest he feels like he’s been punched in the diaphragm, winded.

Because the houses outside, the street – everything is so familiar-not-familiar that it physically _hurts_. The sun is setting, casting everything into a warm glow that speaks of remembered summers sitting out on brownstone steps, of friends and bars and beer and barbeques, and it just hits him how much he’s missed all of that. How much he longs for it. This isn’t his neighbourhood, no, this is Queens, but this is Sam’s neighbourhood and he’s spent enough time here that it’s almost as close to him as his own, and _Jesus Christ_ –

“Hey, man,” Sam says lowly when he notices Steve sit up, his tone and volume in line with the muted silence that Steve’s woken up into. “Nearly there. You were out for a while.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and he has to clear his throat afterwards because his voice is hoarse and dry and it feels like he’s been screaming for hours. He chances a glance over at Sam, trying to gauge what Sam is thinking, but all he sees is the placid calm Sam is so good at embodying, his eyelids lowered over watchful eyes fixed on the road, long eyelashes fanning out over his cheekbones. Steve’s stomach clenches, suddenly reminded of how _pretty_ Sam is, and there’s a hint of warmth swirling in his gut that he’d thought he’d forgotten how to feel, and this is _not_ a good time and _not_ a good place and what the fuck is even going on –

He chalks it up to it having been a real weird day, and clamps down on the warmth blooming in his gut with thoughts of being locked up again that are enough to make his hands shake but shallow enough to just distract him from any inappropriate feelings of attraction and not send him for a spin.

Sam pulls into a street that Steve recognises without a doubt, because it hasn’t changed a bit in the seven years since he’s last seen it. The goddamned trees are even in the same places, none of them cut down or removed. It’s comforting, he realises when he manages to identify the feeling that’s come over him at seeing it, to know that, like him, other things have been frozen in time and haven’t moved from his memory.

That feeling lasts the length of the street, but then Sam is pulling the car over onto the curb in front of a very familiar house – he knows that house – without a fucking doubt, and then it’s like he’s been punched in the gut with everything that the warm feelings had been staving off until this moment.

Because the last time he was here –

He _grew up_ here, him and Nat –

God, what fucking right does he have to be back here, after everything he’s done? He doesn’t have the fucking right, can’t possibly be welcome in this place, because Sam grew up here and his sister and his mom took in two bedraggled, desperate white-trash kids like abandoned puppies and gave them a fucking _home_ here, gave them shelter and food and safety and a _family_ , and now Steve’s gone and _tainted_ that, gone and fucked everything up, and for Steve to have the _audacity_ to come back here and ruin those memories, destroy that history of safety and love, makes him a goddamned monster.

(He knows he’s a fucking monster.)

He feels hot all over, suddenly, and his lungs are so tight it’s a miracle he isn’t having an asthma attack with how much he’s forcing himself to control his breathing, to stop himself from hyperventilating, because they’ve already _been through_ this shit and they don’t need to do it again, twice in one day, because that’s got to be enough for anyone, for a fucking saint, let alone Sam, who’s already talked him down on the side of the fucking highway today and doesn’t need to do it again outside of his mom’s house.

His fingers dig into the cushioning of the car seat next to his thighs, squeezing so hard that if he’d had fingernails he knows he would have torn right through it by now, and he’s grateful for that because he doesn’t want to wreck Sam’s car, but then it occurs to him that isn’t this all he does, anyway? Destroy things? He’s hurt enough goddamned people that he could make a fucking career out of it at this point, and that’s probably what he’s going to have to do because _he can’t be outside in normal society_ , he fucking can’t, he has to be locked up because otherwise –

“- Steve!” Sam’s voice finally cuts through the panicked haze clouding his head, and Steve whips his head around to Sam even as he flinches backwards, knocking his head against the handle above the door because he doesn’t want to be backhanded across the face again, he’s had enough of that because he figures if he’s familiar enough with the burn to crave it as a routine, then he’s fucked up beyond hope and they should have just locked him up in a mental hospital to save them the trouble of waiting for him to fuck up on the outside again, it would be easier for everyone –

“Steve, focus. Steve, don’t fucking do this to me again, please, it’s Sam, right? Sam.”

Oh, _Jesus_. _Jeeeeeeeeeesus_.

He pushes to focus in on anything but the upraised hands that are in his face, tries to look past them because they aren’t coming any closer and he knows they’re not moving and they’re not coming for him, not going to hit him, but he can’t do it. Can’t look past them, can only cringe into himself and hunch his shoulders in protectively around his ears because he’s done something wrong, has fucked up again like he always does and there’s correction coming like there always is and he reckons that he should have had enough of discipline and order to stop him from fucking up all the time, but this just proves he hasn’t.

But then the hands _move –_

They come towards him slowly, and why are they moving so slowly, but he can’t take his eyes off them even when he has to strain to keep them in view and why aren’t they striking out, why are they being careful, he doesn’t understand, why –

The hands settle on his own, warm and weighted and gentle.

He hadn’t even realised he’d curled up on the seat in a ball, tangled up in the seatbelt, but his hands are curled into fists and his forearms are raised protectively in front of his face, but now there are _hands touching him_ and it _doesn’t hurt_ , and somewhere in there the wires get crossed and all that cuts through the panicked haze in his head is confusion, because why isn’t he being attacked right now?

“Steve,” the voice says again, and it suddenly occurs to Steve that the voice has been there the entire time he’s been panicking, a low, comforting murmur in a tone like the one he’d use to approach a feral dog. And it’s absolutely not what he’s expecting, what his brain’s expecting, because it’s not loud and it’s not harsh and it’s not screaming at him, and this is startling enough that his head sort of… _skips_ …and everything else comes into focus.

Sam. Sam’s hands. Sam looking at him with concern. Sam. _Sam._

“ _Sam_ ,” he chokes out, and Sam seems to sag in relief, tension leeching out of his muscles as he drops his hands and sighs.

Steve wonders why Sam was so tense in the first place, but then it occurs to him that he probably thought Steve would lash out at him, would hurt him, and then it makes sense. Shame washes over him in a prickly wave, because he doesn’t want Sam to be scared of him. It’s understandable, he knows, and he can’t do a fucking thing about the fact that it’s a reasonable reaction, but still – he’d thought – maybe –

“Don’t scare me like that, man,” Sam says, his voice unsteady in comparison to the soothing tone he’d been murmuring in just moments ago, and Steve can tell he’s not serious at the same time as being completely serious, and that just adds to the nauseous feeling of guilt coiling in his gut. He’s really shaken Sam up, and Sam doesn’t fucking deserve that.

He licks his lips, croaks out, “Sorry. Just – sorry. I…yeah.”

Sam just _looks_ at him, and then turns back to the front and knocks his forehead on the steering wheel, _bang bang bang_.

Steve waits for him to say something, his breathing ragged with anxiety, curling his fingers into fists again to stop his hands from shaking. Because this is bad, this is very bad. Sam said he was going to stick by Steve, to support him, but Steve had already lied to him about the anxiety attacks and maybe Sam is thinking that this is just going to be too hard, because Steve is a lot more fucked up than he’d originally thought and maybe it’s too much for Sam and it’d be easier to just leave Steve to the consequences of his own actions.

And Steve’s been a burden on Sam and his family since he was seventeen goddamned years old, coming into their home and eating their food and stealing up their love and support, and this is how he’s fucking repaid them, with this whole fucking situation, and he knows it’s not fair, has known it his entire life and he had been too selfish to do the right thing, to leave before he destroyed their lives as well as his own, and Jesus Christ _he’s doing it again_ , he’s so _fucking selfish_ and Sam doesn’t fucking deserve this –

“Stop it,” Sam says firmly, voice muffled from where he’s still resting his forehead on the steering wheel, and Steve can’t help but flinch from the cold authority in his voice. “I know what you’re thinking, and you need to stop it.”

Sam’s always known him too well, has been able to read him too easily.

But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.

He takes a deep breath, and the words are spilling out of his mouth before he can finish it, slippery and apologetic and ashamed. “It’s not fair to you, Sam, really. _God_ , I’m so fuckin’ grateful that you’re doing this, that you’re putting up with me, and I completely understand if you wanna throw me to the curb, Lord knows I would, because I know I didn’t tell you, I know I lied to you, and I understand if it’s too much, I swear to god I understand, just tell me, just fuckin’ tell me and I’ll be outta your hair before you know it, just give me a couple days to get my head on straight, then I’ll be outta your hair and you won’t have to worry about a thing, you won’t, I promise, I fuckin’ promise you, Sam.”

He shuts his mouth so hard his teeth click together, but everything has already spilled out of him so it doesn’t fucking matter anyway. He’s said his bit.

Sam groans like he’s in incredible pain. “Shut the fuck up, you fucking asshole,” he spits out with enough vehemence to have Steve half-folding into himself with muscle memory, and then he’s sitting up straight and Steve hasn’t seen Sam this angry in years, not since –

Sam’s eyes are bright and shining, and Steve wonders if this is what is going to push Sam to hit him. He kind of half hopes so, because at least they’d be getting it out of the way, but Sam doesn’t make a single move, instead turning away from Steve almost violently and spitting out,

“FUCK, fuck.” He hits his fist on the window hard enough to make the car shake, an outburst of uncontrolled emotion. “I know I’m not supposed to do this, because you’re so fucked up in the head right now, Steve, I can’t even – _fuck_ – but I am _begging you_ to understand, I am committed to you, alright? _Maximum – fucking – effort_. But you – oh, Jesus – you make me _so goddamned mad_ when you get like this, you always have, because _I am not going to abandon you at the first sign of difficulty_. Why is that – why, do – why is that so fucking hard to get through your thick skull? _FUCK_.”

He hits the door again.

Steve sits there, stunned. He can’t move, like Sam’s pinned him down and holding him there with nothing but words, and they’re just as heavy as concrete bricks, just as cutting. He doesn’t – can’t fucking process – understand, because why would – but Sam is looking at him with big brown eyes, expecting him to say something, to respond somehow, and Steve really needs to find something to say or this might get even worse, but he feels so _raw_ , flayed open by the violent mesh of Sam’s declaration of support with his frustration, that he comes up empty.

Sam waits for another second, then, when he realises that Steve is incapable of saying anything in response, he sighs heavily, sagging in his seat and burying his face in his palms.

He’s disappointed, Steve knows, and goddamn it but the guilt is really fucking him up today, and he can’t do a fucking thing right, can he, and now he’s gone and upset Sam and Sam _never_ gets upset, not really, and Steve can count on the one hands the amount of times that Sam has gotten like this while Steve’s been around, and he sort of cringes at the conclusion that it’ll probably happen a lot more, now. Steve’s gotten so – now, he knows, he’s…well. He’s _unstable_ , now.

But Sam looks so _sad_ , so sad that Steve can’t get his fucking brain to work and _say something_ , and there has to still be something good in Steve, something untainted by the disgusting mess of a person he’s become, because he _has_ to make Sam feel better. He doesn’t want to see Sam get like this over him, not when Sam is helping him and has been there for him for all those years, when Sam has been the one to visit him all the fucking time and never leave him for more than a month between visits, alone and with no connection to the outside world. Sam has kept him _sane_ for seven years, Sam and Sam alone, and Steve can’t just come out and be like this, make Sam feel like this, because he’s a fucking asshole and this is the biggest dick move he could possibly make.

So he tentatively reaches out his hand, making sure to telegraph his movements so that Sam has enough time to knock his hand away if he doesn’t want it, and takes Sam’s hand in his lap, squeezing tightly. It’s the first real non-violent contact he’s had in a while, outside of the single hug permitted at the end of each visitation, and it _shows_ , because it tingles like static electricity and makes the hairs on Steve’s forearms and the back of his neck stand up. He shivers involuntarily, hoping that this is ok, that reaching out to Sam is the right thing to do.

After a tense moment, Sam’s hand shifts under his and squeezes back.

Steve lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. _Thank god._

“I’m sorry,” he says, repeating it, but it’s just as true, if not more meaningful now. “I just –fuck.” Steve pinches the bridge of his nose with the hand not holding Sam’s. “I just – I don’t know. Somethin’ gets crossed, all mucked up, and I can’t – _fuck_.”

Sam chews on his lip for a second before saying, “I know it’s hard. And I know you’re trying your best, and your head’s throwing you for a loop. I _know_. But I just – can you just do _one thing_ for me, and try and remember that I’m not gonna kick you out? Like, if you can’t do anything else, just remember that. Because I’m _tired_ , Steve, of reminding you that you’re worth something, okay? I’m just – really tired. I love you, you know that, but for some reason it doesn’t stick in your head, just floats out your ear the second something goes wrong. But I just need you to remember that I’m not gonna let you go. That I’m gonna be here for you. Alright? Can you do that one thing for me?”

Steve isn’t crying. He’s tearing up and his vision is blurring and his nose is prickling and his lips are trembling, but he isn’t crying. But it’s so overwhelming, because Sam _cares_ because Sam Wilson is a fucking saint, and he’s willing to put up with Steve and all of his shit and be there with him to the end of the fucking line, and he doesn’t deserve Sam. He really doesn’t. But Sam’s asking him to ignore that, to recognise that even if he doesn’t deserve Sam, he’s always going to have Sam there by his side anyway.

_Jesus, fuck_. His chest clenches with a feeling he can’t identify, with something that feels heavy and warm and suffocating and _good_ all at once, and no he is definitely not crying, those are not tears that he quickly swipes away with presses of his fingers against his cheeks and wipes off on his pants.

It’s hard, very hard, but he manages to choke out, “I’ll remember, I promise.”

Sam nods his head, accepting Steve’s words, and graciously doesn’t say anything or acknowledge anything while Steve sniffs a few times and wipes his face with the bottom of his t-shirt and then checks the passenger mirror to make sure he doesn’t look like he’s been crying, which is a fucking joke because his eyes are stinging and red-rimmed and his eyelashes are wet and clumping together, but because Sam is a fucking pal he just lets Steve have a bit of time to compose himself.

After Steve’s breathing has stopped hitching, Sam says wryly, “We’ve been sitting out here for a while, my mom’s probably been peeking through the curtains and called the neighbourhood watch on our ass for loitering.”

Steve chokes out a wet laugh. “We’d better go in, then, before she comes out waving her rolling pin.”

“That was _one time_ , and completely not my fault.”

They huff a laugh at the memory, but then Steve takes in a deep, fortifying breath and falls back into seriousness. “But really, we should go in before I have another fuckin’ breakdown and we never get to see your mom.”

Sam gives him a look, assessing and pitying all at once. “You sure you’re good?”

Steve scoffs with false bravado, looking out the window and then back at Sam. “Yeah, sure. Already filled my quota today. We’re good from here on out.”

Sam shakes his head. “You’re an idiot.”

“Yeah, I know,” Steve mutters self-deprecatingly, slightly bitter, but he’s pushing open the car door and climbing out before he can think about things too much again and tie himself back up in knots. Sam follows a beat after and the doors have barely slammed shut before the front screen door of the house is banging open against the wall and she must have actually been watching them from behind the curtains because the timing is too good.

Steve takes a deep breath as he walks around the car towards the house. He’s ready.

(He really isn’t.)

“Stevie-boy!” Sam’s mom yells out from the porch, taking the steps one at a time because of her arthritis, but managing to make it to the nature strip in a surprisingly short amount of time for a woman her age. Steve is abruptly touched by how happy she is to see him, and it’s been so many years but it suddenly doesn’t feel like many years at all. She looks the same, the goddamned same, like nothing has changed since the last time they saw each other and he’s still her adopted son and she still loves him like she’s his fucking mom.

It cuts through him right to the core.

“Stevie-boy,” she repeats, puffing slightly, holding out her arms for a hug. “Come and give me a hug, silly boy.”

Steve knows his eyes are watering already, but Mrs Wilson’s hug breaks him right open. He steps forward and bends down so she can wrap him in her arms and squeeze him to her chest, her hand petting the back of his neck and roughly smoothing down his hair. It’s such a _motherly_ hug, such a blatant reminder of how much Sam’s family _cares_ about him, and nobody has touched him like this in so long, nobody – for _so long_ – that Steve finds himself blubbering into her shoulder and smearing snot and tears into her nice blue t-shirt before he can stop himself.

“Aw, c’mon now, it’s all good,” Mrs Wilson says soothingly, still petting the back of his neck.

Steve nods into her shoulder and sniffs wetly, pulling back from the hug. He’s been crying so easily today, he has no idea what the fuck is going on. Mrs Wilson lets her arms drop from around Steve’s shoulders to his arms, not letting him step away from her. “’M sorry,” Steve says thickly, nodding at the dark, wet patch on her shoulder. He swipes at his eyes and wipes his face with the hem of his t-shirt. “Don’t know why I’m like this.”

Mrs Wilson reaches up and cuffs him over the back of the head before moving her hand to cup his cheek. “You don’t get to apologise for crying. Lord, I’ve spent enough time blubbering this past week to feed a river. Now, come inside and I’ll make you up some nice teacake while Samuel starts up the grill.”

“Hi, momma,” Sam says blandly, amused. He’s standing back behind Steve a little bit, obviously giving them some space for their reunion. He raises his eyebrows. “Nice to see you too.”

Mrs Wilson whirls around from where she’s threaded her arm through Steve’s and has started to escort him towards the house, her eyes narrowing. “I am your _mother_ , Samuel, and you don’t get to speak to me in that tone. Now, go and grill up some steaks while I look after your poor friend Steven here, and I _might_ let you have some cake later. Go on, useless boy, go!” She flaps her free hand at Sam, who puts his hands up in surrender and jogs in front of them towards the side gate, where the barbeque is.

“You’re so mean, momma,” he calls over his shoulder, and Steve huffs out a soggy laugh when Mrs Wilson merely grunts in response.

“Now, Steve, how about you sit down at the table and I’ll put the television on, and you can catch up on how the Mets have been going this season. How does that sound?”

“Great,” Steve says earnestly. Because it really does. It sounds fucking amazing. He lets Mrs Wilson lean on his arm a bit more heavily to help her back up the porch steps, and then opens the screen door for her to go through in front of him before just standing there in the open doorway, letting the familiar smell of Mrs Wilson’s perfume and the coolness of the inside temperature wash over him. He closes his eyes for just a second, heart thrumming in his chest.

_Home_ , he identifies the feeling swelling in his chest, _He’s home_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's read and kudosed and commented, it really makes my goddamned life.
> 
> This plot might feel a bit slow, but it'll speed up after this chapter.  
> It's almost time for Bucky to be introduced!


End file.
